Ricky McCormick /// The McCormick Code /// Part 2 | Forensic Files

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GameChanger [Music] [Applause] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that has 2020 hearing he is the captain what it's good
to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a [Music]
friend today we are drinking codebreaker by the Beautiful Minds over at the Dayton Beer
Company garage grade 3 and 3/4 bottle caps out of five codebreaker is a no funny business Imperial double IPA super
strong and hoppy and with an ABV of almost 10% I don't think you'll be breaking any codes but you might be
speaking in code and code breaker was brought to us by these Beautiful Minds first up we have Lisa in Los Angeles
California I think it's pronounced Wooster big shout out to Stephanie in Greenville South Carolina and a high
five goes out to my man Richie in Meridian Idaho and a low five goes out to Claire in Littleton Colorado next up
a longdistance cheers to Trevor and Deana in Diamond Creek Australia and last but not least a Texas cheers to our
friend Tina down in the Austin area and thanks to everybody for filling up the beer fridge this week if you'd like to
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shirts going on over there and got a surprise shirt coming out pretty soon so look forward to that all right Captain
that's enough of the shirt business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
crime [Music] breaking written codes is an art whose history dates back as long as people
could write and wanted to keep secrets in the age of computers and Advanced Technologies it's hard to
imagine such expertise is still needed the FBI would tell you differently because breaking code C is
the FBI's Crypt analyst and racketeering records units unique specialty despite the use of
state-of-the-art computer technology to gather intelligence examine evidence and
help solve crimes the need to manually break pen and paper codes remains a valuable and necessary weapon in the
FBI's investigative Arsenal according to the FBI criminals use of codes ciphers and concealed
messages are abundant terrorist gang members inmates drug dealers violent loan offenders and
organized crime groups use letters numbers symbols and even invisible ink to encode messages and attempt to hide
illegal activity 41-year-old Ricky McCormack was murdered in June of 1999 his body was discovered just day
days after he was last seen when police were called to the scene they found Ricky's body lying face down in the
grass in an area between a country road and a cornfield homicide detectives searched
the 41-year-old victim's pockets for Clues regarding the victim's identity and leads on where he could have been
just before his murder they found some things in the man's Pockets one item was a ticket for
an emergency room where he had visited shortly before his death and they also found two pages of notes on these Pages
were lengthy messages these were written in some strange code the detectives passed these
coded pages to the FBI and after examining the documents the FBI concluded that these ciphers could say
who killed Ricky mccormic years passed and then one day everything changed when when the FBI
released the two coded pages to the public and asked you to help solve an open murder
case despite extensive work by the FBI the meaning of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day and Ricky
McCormack's murderer Is Yet To Face Justice in fact Ricky McCormack's encrypted notes are one of the
crru top unsolved cases according to the FBI breaking the code could reveal the victim's whereabouts before his death
and could lead to the solution of a homicide this is the story of the McCormick [Music]
[Music] code in March of 2011 FBI officials made a rare and a remarkable Revelation this
coming seemingly out of the blue Dan Olen he's the chief of the bureau's cryptanalyst racketeering records unit
we'll call that the crru in Quantico Virginia he disclosed for the first time the existence of two
pages of handwritten encrypted notes found stuffed in the pockets of McCormick's
jeans now unable to decipher the tangle of letters and numbers the FBI released copies of this to the public with a plea
for assistance to hardcore puzzle solvers and wannabe sleuths to help them solve this code and maybe potentially
solved the murder of Ricky McCormack and let's just get the you know the elephant
in the room Let's uh punch him in the face the elephant in the garage you're going to you're going to abuse the
elephant that I brought with me no I'm not go ahead I'm bunch of PETA people are going to write me now um no so I
find the fact that they found these notes on Ricky and they were not reported to the family immediately mhm
and they had to wait till 12 years later to discuss these with the family I feel
that that's very irresponsible okay so let's talk about his family a little bit because and I agree with you
let's let's say we can we can definitely say that they've never seen them the family never saw these encrypted notes
we'll call them right until 12 years later actually they said they didn't know anything about this until they saw
on their local news channel that these ciphers had been released to the public they they had no knowledge of this at
all yeah it was not reported to the family everything that was was found on him was reported to the family except
for these two notes yes so here's here's what I wonder about though um we know that the police held these
notes for two years before they gave them to the FBI mhm couple things I wonder if if the police that they held
these items one because they were just found on his body but two maybe they assumed they that they were either
nothing or it was a clue that they were working and when they question his family you know cuz we have his family
saying no he he didn't write in code Ricky didn't write in code he barely read he barely could write right he
couldn't spell anything and so I'm wondering if police ask questions to the family and they say yeah he never wrote
anything in code he he could barely write he could barely read MH that the police go well they don't know anything
about this this is something we're going to keep to ourselves yeah but we have a
double-edged sword here because we have some people in his family that say nope he could he couldn't read or write the
only thing he could write was his name and then you have other people in his family that come out and said oh yeah he
would uh jot down these random things all the time mhm and carry them around with him and it was just like his own
language and I wonder Captain if it was only after two years it looks to me you know people some people even debate
whether this is a homicide or not mhm and we debated that certainly in the first episode but to me what I
see I see investigators treating this as a homicide investigation right I see them working this as a homicide
investigation I wonder if after two years when they couldn't couldn't put a case together to put somebody in court
right that at that point they go well let's pass these notes along to somebody that can do something with them we've
run out of we've run out of ideas we're banging our head against the wall here here let's give this to some some legit
code crackers right send it to the FBI the FBI they have it for the next 10 years before they release it to the
public and it's only after the FBI says look we've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours trying to crack this
code we can't crack it yeah and what the FBI would tell us is that we the FBI firmly believes it is some type of code
but what they can't tell us is how to solve it yeah and they're not even really giving us any clues or any leads
of what they believe and I think maybe that's just cuz they want to release the code and have whoever that possibly
could solve this just look at it with fresh eyes MH and so they're not going to say well we think this means this or
this means this um but they've done this in the past they with the Zodiac and and
other cases where they have released uh information to the public and the public
has been able to solve something that they couldn't right so do you do you want to describe give us a brief
description of these uh codes let's call them the McCormick code is what I've been calling it I I don't even know how
to describe it but we'll put uh both of these up on all social media platforms but also at ww.com garage.com now let's
talk about code breaking for a little bit okay so the FBI code Breakers they say they typically unlock the meanings
of ciphers that they receive in a matter of hours mhm now the codes from Ricky McCormack the notes found on Ricky
McCormick they they had these for over a decade and they worked them they brought
in other people um they did everything they could to try to attempt to break these codes breaking them down manually
with graph paper and pencil at first uh Dan Olsen himself he dissected the strings of letters and numbers on
whiteboards uh he then employed computers with state-of-the-art software to perform statistical analysis of these
notes and they still came up with nothing now what what the FBI would tell us is
this that it doesn't happen very often that they get an unsolved Cipher of this length is what they're stating this
length I think is key here now the FBI says that the characters are not random they firmly believe this is a code
stating things like there are many e's for an example the letter e that could be used as space as a spacer rather than
an actual meaning or a letter or number right meaning that there's sometimes it could be one number that is used as a
spacer one letter or a series of numbers or a series of letters that somebody could use as
a Breaking Point right so you could essentially say the captain writes a cipher and every time you see
capap that that actually means space MH yeah and they would go on to explain that there are many characteristics in
these notes that suggest it could be solved they State there are patterns that they see within these
messages but obviously the problem is they just don't know why it's not solved able right the FBI's website also it
takes us through some of the workings on how to crack codes um it stating that cracking a code takes four steps first
one must determine the language used in this case it's English then the system that is used a cipher in which letters
are transposed or substituted for something else for example or a code in in which a letter such as R represents a
person or a place M or perhaps even some kind of secret language such as like a like a version of pig ltin now after
that one must reconstruct the key that explains how the code marker changed the letters of the message such as
shifting such as by shifting every character three letters to the right in the alphabet m is an example and finally
one then can apply the key and then transcribe the hidden message now the FBI says unfortunately with Ricky
McCormick's notes that were found in his pocket uh we can't get past step two there's three major styles of code so I
could write a code that I'm going to give to you that you could be able to figure out maybe if I give you a key um
or that I'm just going to give to somebody and they have to basically twist things around and kind of figure
out for themselves okay without a key and then the other one is that you would just write down stuff in code that only
you would understand now if that was the case in in Ricky's code it might be never solved because you would never
know what certain things meant because it only meant something to him mhm well there's certainly No Lack of theories
here in this case as to what the codes could be or could mean right um you know when they released this to the public it
started off with with TV stations in Missi and Illinois they start running with the update and then next thing you
know news organizations as far away as New Zealand were broadcasting this information and then the FBI ends up
getting thousands and thousands of public comments and theories pouring in from all over this becomes a hugely
popular case on the internet because of the cipher mhm and so let's talk about this too because you know we've
mentioned that there are some family members that that state Ricky couldn't read very well or couldn't read at all
he couldn't write very well right um so this brings us to a popular Theory and one of those is you know some have
suggested these notes are just simply meaningless that they are the random random scribblings of a man by by some
accounts was functionally illiterate we don't have him being diagnosed with any Mental Illness but again this could be
writings in a manic state or this could be uh writings of somebody that has uh untreated
schizophrenia yeah and but the thing that I want to go back to when people suggest that these could be
meaningless messages or just random scribblings Dan Olsen Dan Olsen yes the the leader of of the unit that cracks
the codes they come out and they say look we believe this is real code and stating to that fact saying that this
means something these messages mean something that they look at a lot of things they see a lot of things and
investigate them that are gibberish that are arbitrary strikes on a keyboard mhm
they're stating this is not the case with this you know they they examine hundreds of suspected codes each year
and the first thing they do in that process is weeding out those that are nonsense from the codes that the the
bureau needs to crack and to solve I think he said something like we've seen a lot of gibberish yes and this is not
it right but the other thing he says is that we're really good at our job and part of me wants to say well
obviously not good enough well you solve this one yeah um well we you know even Tom Brady loses a Super Bowl every now
and then boom but anyway so the the such a douche the the crru St stes that after they weed out
the ones that are gibberish that after that process only about 1% of the codes go unbroken we need them to be more like
Michael Jordan which doesn't lose championships right um but like I said I think the first mistake they made is not
going to the family members sooner because one do we even have a writing sample of Ricky to know if this is his
handwriting or not now they claim you know Dan Olson claims that this they believe it was written by Ricky mhm
again a guy that was not known to write things so do we have any samples of any writings and I think they could have got
that if they would have went to the family sooner yeah I think you're right um they may have checked for these
things at his apartment that he shared with his girlfriend but you just made me think about something there Captain mhm
and it's this you could have if if for some reason you will when you're looking at a piece of evidence such as this you
don't really know what you have right so that would make you want to keep it somewhat secret as well because you're
not sure what you're looking at and what involvement it has in the case that you're working right however you could
you don't have to show your full hand right couldn't you take a portion of that code or a portion of one of the
messages and and show it to the family members yeah I mean you don't have to there could have been a happy a happy
middle ground here right yeah I mean you could have photocopied them uh and take
just take a little section or rewrote the section yourself and just say look we found this on a piece of paper uh
does does it mean anything to does this mean anything to you yeah or if you show
the handwriting does this mean anything to you and the mom that says that he didn't read or write might have said oh
yeah you know Ricky wrote stuff like that you know like he couldn't spell words but he knew what letters were
right but we don't even have any knowledge if he knew really what letters were and you're right maybe at least
just confirming the handwriting you know even if you could just get a few people
by visual aid saying visually looking at it and saying um I don't know why people
say or why I say visually looking at it how else are you going to look at it but
um with your ears you know a beard is on a face you have 2020 hearing Captain yeah um so but yeah you could at least
show that to the family members or people close to him and say can you say in your opinion if if this is his
Ricky's handwriting or not now tell me if I'm wrong but Li detectors not used in court right right handwriting
analysis can be used in court um yes and I actually think that that varies by state okay because um I think now
somebody's going to get mad at me about this I think I spoke about this before we're all mad at you because I was
looking at handwriting analysis quite a bit when we were talking about the Black
Dalia because there were some messages that were sent to newspapers and I believe to the police as well at the
time and some have suggested that those are connected to the Black Dalia case I believe that um I believe that
it's only accepted in certain States because I think that the as far as far as the law enforcement Community is
concerned handwriting analysis is not an an exact science right that it's more of
somebody giving their quote unquote expert opinion you know just with same with polygraph tests you know there are
there are people that are really good at administering and reading a polygraph test and there's other people that are
poor at it just like with any job you know there's good there's there's good people and there's bad people yeah I
mean some people host a weekly True Crime podcast and they knock it out of the park and then then there's the
colonel I'm joking I thought you were going to say you there's LeBron James and then
there's stinks Curry all right let's before we get too far off track here um let's continue to
talk about these notes and what the FBI suspects you had mentioned that the FBI not only suspects that this is a real
code but they suspect Ricky wrote this himself they would further go on to explain that the messages in their
opinion are done in more of a format of something written to oneself rather than something written to
someone else right like I said before the three different major kinds and the FBI when talking about this this topic
and this this specific point to their opinion is that they point out that there are circles drawn around some of
the segments within the code and they say this could be something as simple as a s a to-do list you know where where
items are kind of marked as task that are completed you know once you finish something you Circle it or you know
while you're at the grocery store when you when you picked up the butter like you put on your list you cross it out
right um the other thing that's kind of chilling in a way is that not only do they believe that Ricky McCormick wrote
these notes himself the FBI also believes that he wrote them within days of him being killed mhm um and I think
that's why I think that's why they're they keep going back to this and they're stating you know if it doesn't say if
the codes do not say who killed him or who he was may have been running from let's say that the code could be
something as simple as what he was doing at the time leading up to his death yeah
his whereabouts or maybe who he was seeing or what you know whatever he was doing but page one is a lot different
than page two now there's groups of letters that go with page one and page two they they would make you believe
they're written by the same person the handwriting looks the same but in page one there's a lot of parentheses around
things and in page two you have these big circles around sections mhm um so you can visually see them that they're
different but you can visually see they're written by the same person and you're describing these as page one and
page two based off of uh what what the FBI has classified as page one and page two now one thing that's very curious to
me and this is something simple that that I would like to know who your father is is what they're referring to
as page one actually has what appears to be a the letter P with the number one next to it or a letter I next to it at
the top of the page and circled right almost like somebody's marking this as page one and I would love to know you
know I hate when I hate when they release these things and then they they just say like uh we believe it's a code
we believe that Ricky wrote it himself and we believe that he wrote it within days of his death go for it try to
figure it out we're not telling you anything else cuz that P1 at the top of what is referred to as page one was that
already on the note when they got it when they received it or did or did somewhere in the code breaking process
did the FBI determine this is page one this is Page one let's get back to the cipher right after this quick beer
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one one of the things I found really interesting about Ricky's case was you know obviously these ciphers M but when
you look at these ciphers I mean I've looked at the Zodiac ciphers a bunch I used to have them on my desk at work
right which are always weird people out they'd be like what is what are all these symbols I had it blown up really
big mhm and then my boss told me I had to put it away but this reminds me a little bit like Brandon
Lawson where when you hear the Brandon Lawson 911 you know call you start thinking well fill people in for those
that don't know okay so Brandon Lawson was this guy that disappeared he went missing in uh Texas right and he calls
911 from his cell phone apparently he's on the side of the road his truck broke down now he's talking very fast and he's
almost inaudible at times right but when you hear it you start thinking if I could slow this down or if I could go
piece by piece I could figure this out I could figure out what he's saying and then maybe figure out what happened to
this poor guy right and so this code is released and and you know we're diving into the case so at some point you got
to go let me look at this code and I was expecting to look at something and think
I can't you know I'm I'm just a I'm just a dumb Captain that sails the high seas what am I going to know about
this code but you start looking at it you start finding things you don't know what they mean but
you're finding them right and and then you know I was telling you before you got here I just kept last night I I
think I would look at it for about 10 minutes and I'd pass out at my desk and then I wake up and go oh no I can still
I can I can solve this um and I I got nowhere closer but it's one of those things you're going to look at this code
and and check it out it's going to be on the website it's going to be on social media check it out you're going to start
seeing patterns but you're going not going to know what those mean obviously well and that's what I that's why I
think the FBI is so firm in their stance that this is sometime some type of encrypted message because it it's even
obvious I dude I look I would love to be some guy that could solve codes and puzzles I wish you were too I'm not good
at it cuz maybe you could go do that so so I look at something like this with no
expectation that I'm going to be able to offer anything at all but even to my eye
immediately as you said there's patterns within these messages that you see that
that lead you to go wait I think I'm on to something here right yeah it's it's like it's a deceptive uh Cipher so you
have like a I'll just give a couple quick examples we're not going to go through the whole notes here but um one
thing you see from from time to time is p what appears to be P RS e yes the letters P RS e uh repeated in that same
sequence often throughout these messages you also see what most people refer to as W I'm sorry as
ncbe right and you see that a lot a ton and and actually on several occasions you see numbers what appear to be
numbers before ncbe so like it looks like 74 ncbe and then later 7 1 ncbe and 75 ncbe now you and I had a had a garage
discussion um you know before we turned on the mics here and you and I both questioned if if it it's if it's
intended to be in CBE you know you said well what if that's a u and I said well what if it's a w when we were both
referring to the N right because there's there's one portion in the in the message where it almost looks like he
and I say he like we know that he wrote it we don't know for certain but it looks like he wrote
wcbe and then the lines underneath of that then appear to be ncbe right which could just be you know
the The Lazy hand or or the the slant getting getting more um exaggerated as the the author continued on well like
you said you know all joking aside I mean neither one of us believe that we're code Breakers or even capable of
breaking codes like this it's just not our Forte right um but what are some theories that the internet has come up
with since the release of these ciphers well like I said earlier there's no shortage of theories out there but uh so
I'll kind of start with the more popular ones um we've already mentioned that one
one very popular theory is that it's not a code at all and we've already kind of
talked through that um then there's the theory that it is a code but it wasn't written by Ricky that that this was
written by somebody else which is possible because he was at the gas station he could have just picked up
something that somebody else wrote also he was at two hospitals and look if this
guy has some issues mentally which I believe there's evidence of that um was he even changing his clothes has has he
been wearing these jeans for a long time could he got one of these notes from you
know he went to two different hospitals he could got those notes from those hospitals mhm um here's a theory that
that there are VIN numbers on these in these messages that they're driving directions okay the other thought is
that it has to do with drug dealing with dealing drugs right that these were some
kind of codes to indicate who he was selling to or who he was making deliveries to and how much he was to
give them how much money he was to collect things of that nature yeah a lot of people also think that this might be
his own personal like medical journal like what medicines he was taken what the dosage was and those all seem to be
the most popular theories that are presented uh by people out there after seeing these codes and these messages
however there are some that are a little more outside of the box thinking let's say right yeah um and these theories are
not as popular I've seen I've seen some crazy theories out there captain and let's say one of them is that Ricky was
killed by the um Hospital the the last hospital that he was at because he saw something that they they were doing some
kind of illegal activity there he was a witness to it and that he made notes about that um you know inside these
messages okay uh the there's another theory that there's some kind of illegal dumping going on in the area of like uh
hazardous chemicals MH and that he may have been witness to that and he was keeping some kind of log about that and
that these are hazardous chemicals that are polluting the not only polluting the
environment but probably uh shortening people's lives uh that live in the area right there's another theory and I think
it may have to do with the hospital as well I I got to be honest when I got to this one Captain I read like the first
two lines that I'm like okay I'm spending my time elsewhere it was that I some kind of um child
molestation ring theory that he had some kind of information about that and and was going to tell people or well that
makes a lot more sense actually and based off his history I mean I think he was 40 what 40 some years old when he
was having sex with a 14-year-old and he started having sex with her when she was
11 he was 34 when he got caught and so he's 34 she was 14 at that time he 20 years older than her when that was going
down that's that's called pedophilia right so I didn't think about it from that angle well because he got lucky to
be charged with statutory rape and I mean again you don't want a victim you bash right right but the fact of the
matter is that's horrible right and and I believe uh I'm going to just say this and I hope I don't get much hate m i I
really believe that he had something going on mentally and I feel bad for him and that doesn't make his actions right
at all right but I think he was operating on a much more um you think that he and the 11-year-old girl may be
operating on the same he had probably more in common with her mentally okay and again I don't I don't know him and
there's not a lot of reports about his family members I mean look this guy is buried no no Mark grave right there's
unmarked grave you cannot go visit his grave nobody's visiting his grave right and I and I do believe that he had some
mental illness that wasn't diagnosed and I don't think his family really gave a [ __ ] well one thing you know and and and
before anybody decides to type something up and send it to you or to I we're we're both stating it doesn't make it
right anything that he did what he did was wrong okay no matter what that at the end of
the day that's wrong right however but one thing that's been obvious to me for most of my adult life is one thing that
this country does not do very well is address mental health issues no we're we're not good we're good at a lot of
things this country is good at a lot of things but that is not one of them and you're you're very right it could have
been some kind of undiagnosed mental illness or issue that he had um and and therefore I mean who
knows well and here's the thing if you have a guy that is known to do odd jobs you know oh hey if I have this package
of drugs I can give it to you and you can go deliver it to this guy but look I mean is is it possible that um some guy
approaches him cuz he he knows that um you know Rick's a little off and look somebody you know people write us and
say don't say he's a little off that's well look if he's not diagnosed with anything and he is a little off I don't
know what else you call it right right and and like I said I wish he would have been able to get help I wish he would
have been able to get diagnosed I wish he was not dead right but the fact of the matter was he was a little off so is
it possible that some sicko knows that Ricky was with an underage woman at some point some sicko that he meets in prison
and says hey maybe you can help me MH I can give you a little bit of money that's not that farfetched I would just
think that the family members or any of his friends would have mentioned this at
some point yeah so let's let's toss out I would prefer to kind of toss out the more wild theories the the ones that I
deemed outside of the box thinking because if we talk if we discuss every Theory that's out there regarding these
messages um we could do a whole a whole year of this okay well let's so let's start with the popular ones right
Captain yeah so some of my issues when people talk about this is possibly driving directions is you have this uh
sequence that at some point where it's basically the same words over and over um but they're not really words it's the
same set of letters and then you get the 71 74 and a 75 now to me with the driving directions that doesn't make a
lot of sense because normally you don't drive up 71 and then hit 74 and then hit
75 you know what I mean right like you do on occasion but yeah it usually doesn't follow in that I was on 60 then
I got on 61 then 62 then 63 made a left at 64 hopped on 65 and it seems like most of the time when there are numbers
in this Cipher that they're close in relationship at one point there's a 36 and then the next line there's a
35 so that's weird and then there's a group uh in the second page where it's 99.
84.5 right two and that could be a z or it could be a two so 99.8 9.52 so I don't know what these I have
no clue what these numbers mean but when I think when people start saying that they're directions I just have a problem
with that because the numbers don't seem to add up all the time now again there's
this one section where it's 36 74 29 and maybe some other numbers in there that aren't legible maybe a 75 there or
175 right so there's a couple spots where you go well maybe this part's directions again you start wondering
well if that's directions this middle section is that just directions that he could read and that's just how he wrote
you know what I mean like he doesn't know how to write a word but he can he kind of sounds it out and it's enough
for him to remember what it is so there's a few issues I have with it being driving directions first of off
the obvious that the man didn't own a vehicle nor did he have a driver's license right that doesn't mean that he
wouldn't have driving directions on his person I just think it makes it much more less likely that he would have them
right and second of all um the other thing the the thought that's there's kind of two thoughts when you mention
driving directions there's also the possibility that they're not really directions directing you from point A to
point B and then then on from there that they're just each line might be some type of location right and it's just a
list of locations right now the issue with that and with the driving direction issue is that you know we're not given a
lot of information from the FBI regarding this but one thing that Dan Olsen did say from the FBI said we
worked that angle we worked that angle big time that was something that we considered early on after receiving this
these messages and we we tried comparing things within these messages to you know
uh the state of Missouri and the surrounding states and nothing nothing lined up to work out
yeah nothing lined up to work that out yeah so they work that angle big time um well you while you we were talking about
numbers maybe we should mention the the you know VIN number vehicle identification number that that's one
Theory that's presented time and time again the problem I have with that theory is VIN numbers are typically 17
digits right and in a VIN number is just that you know the VIN number describes it very good because when you look at a
VIN number it's mostly numbers and not letters if it were mostly letters they would call it Vin letters right and
these are mostly letters when you look at this message it's a it's a lot of letters and very few numbers hey I got
this great idea we should do a whole podcast about a letter that you can't see this will be super entertaining for
the listeners no but check it out you know yeah I don't see it being a vid number because most of the time there's
more letters uh or more numbers within a VIN right than what are on these these papers now okay so medical journal we
said it could be possibly a record of medications that Ricky was taking uh the time and dates that he was taking them
the dosage and I could be wrong and our our amazing uh nurse nurses will call me
out if I'm wrong but you know I've been on and off medication for a long time and you normally wouldn't see like um 36
milligrams right right or like 29 milligram this kind of weird number they're normally like
15 you know 20 you know what I mean like it seems like these would be weird numbers for dosage well and the other
thing though Captain with even with his reported health problems with the chest pains with the breathing issues
even with those known health problems it it it's not known that he was on any prescriptions right because
he didn't have much money right so how would he be paying for these you know prescriptions well and and if it were if
he were he'd have to be on a lot of them for these notes to be required would be
my guess right um I mean there there's these are lengthy messages is what I mean by that yeah now drugs so
going from uh um legal drugs to illegal drugs the thought that these have something to do with his drug runs or
with dealing drugs the the problem I have with that is the numbers okay the numbers that are
listed on these messages don't make any sense to me in that manner right but they don't have to
make sense to you they have to make sense to him that's true and what's interesting here is one of the best
movies of all time Rocky one okay I thought you were going to say a beautiful mind because we're on this
code breaking thing that's why in the beer description I said the Beautiful Minds over at the Dayton Beer Company um
no that's a great movie too but in Rocky Wan he is a debt collector mhm and he you know you got to break their thumbs
right mhm uh just do what I'm telling you rock but what did he do guy couldn't read or write really and he took down
notes yeah every time that his boss told him to go collect from somebody and so uh when you see something like that and
you know I mean look I know it's a fictitious character but is it very possible that that Ricky would write
down little messages for himself to remember on these runs I don't think that's unlikely I think that's a good
plausible thing but I also think if he's writing down these notes for him to remember
that we're never going to solve this right these were just things that were in his head that made sense to to him
now the big one which you see all the time is that ncbe right so a lot of people that think
that means no cash being exchanged meaning I'm going to drop these drugs off and this guy doesn't
need to pay me it's simply a delivery it's not a sell it's you know I'm not showing up and selling you the drugs I'm
just giving them to you which does make some sense because it's at the end of each you know it's normally found at the
end of of the sentence if you want to call it a sentence ah yeah that's that's clever because then it could be a
description of what he's supposed to give to them followed by no cash being exchanged yeah yeah so you're not going
to have to make change for anything you're not to accept or to you're not to expect cash from whoever this is yeah uh
that way things don't get tricky so I mentioned outside of the box thinking Captain this is the time in the garage
show where I give you my weird brain on a platter and you go and everybody can laugh at me clar yeah so here I just
want to go through my thoughts as we're wrapping this up hey no you have good thoughts you're an intelligent guy all
right well you should say that after you hear this okay but I did you know I sometimes pick on you and I think
sometimes people think think that you know I don't appreciate your thoughts I I sit here and listen to you every week
I think you're a smart guy that's true and at one time you were the only one sitting here listening to me every week
still the only I'm still the only one here with us so here here's what my thoughts are um and I want to kind of go
back to the beginning so was oh God was was Ricky murdered is a big major question here yeah I see I see
detectives spending a good deal of time treating this like a homicide I see detectives telling the medical examiner
we suspect Foul Play here I'm going to go off of their expert opinion and just agree with them to make this nice and
easy here okay okay I think that there was something that they know or something that indicated to them that
this was a murder so I'm going to just agree with them on that now as far as the code is this a real code or not does
it mean something again I'm going to go to The Experts we had the FBI stating this is a code this means something we
don't know how valuable it is to the case or not but if we could crack this we could either rule it out or rule it
in so I'm again going to Def to defer to The Experts to people that are smarter than I in this specific area all right
so I think he was murdered I think this was a code I don't know that it necessarily has anything to do with his
murder or maybe that it could even help solve the case right and so you're going
to go against the experts on that one um well here's the thing they may just be saying we think it could solve the case
if it could tell us the last place he was right that could point us into to a suspect that we would need evidence
otherwise to convict the person obviously you can't hold these notes up in court and go see see see
ncbe OJ Simpson did it it's right there there ncbe so and here's my thought though and
as far as did Ricky write this code I think he did I think he did and and I'm not just going to defer to the experts
on this one and this is where my suspicion lies okay I I heard his family and what they
have to say and I believe them maybe to their knowledge he didn't read or write very well or maybe not at all right but
here's one thing that that I kind of kind of went back to several times at when looking at this case and I've heard
several old old I've heard I've heard several older inmates in prisons say this to
incoming inmates did they whisper it in your ear um no they no one said this specifically to me okay I've heard this
is passed on okay the secondhand knowledge is what they say so um I've heard that sometimes
the older inmates tell the incoming inmates you you know do you read or write well if you don't you're going to
do some hard time because reading and writing is a way of passing the time making the time go faster for you
something constructive you can do as you wait to serve your sentence because that's really all you're doing in a
prison sentence is you're just waiting it out so I wonder we know Ricky was in prison for 13 months right I and and and
think about prison one of the worst parts of being sentenced and punished in that manner
is that you have little to none privacy little to no privacy at all that's one of the biggest parts of that punishment
and I think that possibly whether he could read or write or or none of the above that I think that maybe at some
point he developed some kind of system something that he could he could write whether it was jotting down notes
whether it was keeping some kind of personal Daily Journal lots of inmates will write down personal daily
activities to give themselves something to write and they'll write things that are so monotonous things that are like
today had fish sticks for lunch right with applesauce and the broccoli was terrible and I took a walk for an hour
in the yard and then I read a book then received letters then for dinner I had this this
and this you know just really boring stuff that they're keeping track of and I wonder I wonder if maybe he developed
some kind of system either to pass the time or if he coded his little journal to himself to have some form of privacy
so that he could keep these thoughts and keep these records of things without other people being able to read them and
invade his privacy more and I'm wondering that it let's say he did use some type kind of code like that
right he could have used this for running drugs or for just daily activities once he got out of prison
that could be a combination of both the other thing that I wonder too is that that we have the FBI stating that we
think he wrote this within days of him being killed and I part of me wonders I go back to cookie saying you know I
heard from people that yeah he he checked into the hospital at 5 they checked him out at 550 less than an hour
later but I heard from people he stayed in the hospital all night long in the waiting room I wonder if he was jotting
writing these things down there you know that would give him ample time to sit down have you ever tried to sleep in one
of those Hospital waiting rooms you're not getting no sleep so I wonder if if that's what it is now and I want to
point out another code that I think could help understand my reasoning here okay and I'll read it to you best I can
it's it's scribbled on my page here ebcm W no spelled n o l t o pep spelled p then we have the next line which is M
Works spelled w r KS MW FF plus symbol SS i t MLT 20 the number 20 20 mhm 1 SL2 this is I'm sorry this is the next line
1 SL2 third spelled 3 R D- add add c h iix h the number two and the letter O M okay
that is a code that's that's a code that I wanted to point out here what is that
code that I just read to you my code that I came up with myself many years ago when I used to when I used to
bartend and wait tables I had chicken scratch I came up with my own code for when you when you would read off your
order what you wanted to me that I would write it down that fast because I knew that one thing I learned very on that my
income was based off of how friendly accurate and fast I was so if I can make myself faster and more accurate not get
your stuff wrong then I would more likely get a bigger tip from you mhm so what that is is you just you just heard
a party of three and one person ordered a 6 o bacon and cheddar burger medium well minus lettuce tomato onion with
french fries and a Pepsi to drink the next person ordered a 10 oz Works Burger medium well with everything french fries
plus a side salad with Italian dressing a bread stick and a Miller Light 20 o draft and the final person ordered a
half a salad with Third Street dressing and grilled chicken and a bread stick with water to
drink hungry now yeah this sounds delicious anyway especially that Miller Light 20 o draft but what I'm getting at
is that the key the key to solving this code could be in Ricky's brain it could be in his mind and without him
these will never be solved it never mean anything to anybody like my my little code there that I came up with yeah
would make sense to zero even the people that worked at that restaurant they might be able to pick out some things
but not all and what what I mean by that referencing the letter c okay in my little code I use the letter c for
multiple things sometimes it's to tell me if cheddar is on a burger or if somebody ordered a chicken sandwich I'll
use the C for both but depending on where it appears in what order I know when I look at the page if it means
cheese or chicken right so so like you said I mean he wrote so he was murdered he wrote this it could just be a journal
it could have been directions it could have been multiple things yeah but all the codes are in Ricky's head so you're
not going to probably get the answer answers right and I hope that I'm wrong I hope that somebody comes out with
something because the FBI says you know we release this to the public hoping I I
think that not only that somebody could solve it obviously but maybe somebody could come forward with some type of
information that would help them to solve it meaning you know they were stating if we had a third page here we
think we could solve this we just don't have enough to look at or nothing to compare it to to double check our work
let's right that's the big problem with them not going to the family sooner they
might have been able to get something there you were right about that Captain so yeah my thought is you know he was in
the hospital was was he in pain uh he had all these illnesses right mhm uh I think he
had severe mental illness um which was di wasn't diagnosed or if it was at some point you know it happens a lot they
can't afford their medicine if they can't afford their medicine then they can't get their their brains straight um
and we and that's a horrible issue in this country I don't know if he was murdered
you know we have this individual that walked would take um public transportation but also would would
hitch rides from people is it possible that he was at the gas station and hitched ride for somebody and then he
started walking and on a hot day he was dehydrated yeah has a bad ticker and look the autopsy doesn't make any sense
at all no so I can't trust that at all and we don't even know what the cause of death is now if the FBI did come out and
say hey well look he was shot we know that okay well then look at the people that ran the gas station look at people
that he ran drugs for right and those are your suspects but I don't know if there's even evidence that he's that he
was murdered and the sad thing about it is like I said he's he's in an unmarked grave yeah there is no headstone that
identifies Ricky McCormick's final resting place uh he is buried at Laurel Hill Memorial Gardens and if it were not
for an entry in the cemetery's log book no one would ever know that he was buried there
and like I said I I do believe he was dealing with mental illness and when when his friends and and people that
actually did like Ricky say well sometimes he talked like he was from another world well anybody that has
dealt with mental illness knows that there's times in your um illness that you might feel like you're in a
different world and you might be talking as if you might be writing as if so maybe he wrote these um it's more likely
to me that he did write these but I think it's on some level it's um it's almost like cerent gibberish and
like yes maybe if he wrote these these mean something to him um that nobody ever is ever going to figure out and so
it's just weird because there's you know we wouldn't be talking about this case um you know some mentally ill
guy um with a checkered pass is found dead mhm on the side of the road no evidence of being murdered we
wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't for these ciphers but I don't know if these ciphers are going to
get us any closer to the truth well what we would like for everybody to do out there as the captain said we will post
both of the notes and messages ciphers codes whatever you want to call them on our website at true Crim
garage.com we want to know take a look at them we want to know what you think uh what's your theories what are your
thoughts uh if you see anything within these messages let us know please post that on our blog at truecrime
[Music] garage.com hey Colonel yo you feeling FY I'm feeling FY my friend hey good news
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Ricky McCormick /// The McCormick Code /// Part 2

Part 2 of 2

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Episode 188 - Late June, 1999 a woman finds a body near a cornfield off a rural road just about 20 miles north of St. Louis. Investigators are quick to make an identification however the Medical Examiner is uncertain as to how the man has died. Police have their theories and suspicions. They believe the man had been killed somewhere else and dumped in a spot between the road and cornfield. The man was 41 year old Ricky McCormick, a loner. His friends called him a vampire because he would leave home after the sun went down and not return until it was coming up again. Ricky had a checkered past and he ran in some circles that likely could have led to his death. When searching the dead man’s pockets police discovered a strange clue. Two pieces of paper and on each of them long messages written in code. The FBI has released these codes to the public with their own message that these notes could tell us who killed Ricky McCormick. Beer of the Week - Codebreaker by the Dayton Beer CompanyGarage Grade - 3 and 3 quarter bottle caps

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Brief Summary

Ricky McCormack's unsolved murder involves mysterious coded notes believed to hold clues about his death.

Key points

FBI's Code-Breaking Challenge. The FBI released McCormack's coded notes to the public, seeking help to solve the case.
The Mystery of Ricky McCormack. Ricky McCormack's murder remains unsolved, with coded notes found at the scene.
The FBI's Code Investigation. The FBI suspects Ricky wrote the notes himself, possibly just days before his death.
Theories About the Notes. Various theories emerge about the meaning behind Ricky's notes, from drug dealing to personal journals.
Ricky's Mysterious Medications. Discussion about the unusual dosages of medications Ricky was taking raises questions about his health.
The Code's Significance. Experts believe the notes could be crucial to solving the case, but their meaning remains unclear.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The meaning of those two coded notes remain a mystery.

Discussion about the unresolved case of Ricky McCormack.

6:16WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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